Helmut Palmer

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Slogans and “market regulations” at Palmer's house in Remshalden-Geradstetten
Decorations and slogans on the house

Helmut Palmer (born May 8, 1930 in Stuttgart - Untertürkheim ; † December 24, 2004 in Tübingen ) was a German pomologist , civil rights activist and individual candidate in numerous Baden-Württemberg mayor , state and federal elections . Because of his unconventional and sometimes offensive-provocative appearing occurrence as a lone fighter against perceived by him as governmental paternalism authorities measures he was especially in southwestern Germany - referring to its region of origin - as " Remstal - Rebel known".

In his capacity as an arborist, Palmer gave tree pruning courses for farmers and hobby gardeners. The cutting method he developed, the Palmer-Oeschbergschnitt, is similar to the original Oeschbergschnitt , which Palmer learned during his apprenticeship in Switzerland .

One of Helmut Palmer's children is the politician Boris Palmer from the Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen party , who has been Lord Mayor of the city of Tübingen since 2007 .

family

Palmer was the illegitimate son of Emma Palmer, a Christian farmer's daughter from Geradstetten in Remstal , born in 1909 , who was then a saleswoman in a butcher's shop . His father was the married Jewish master butcher Siegfried Kilsheimer from Pforzheim . Despite the double stigma of being born out of wedlock and having a Jewish father, which was considered a shame in the pietistic Remstal, his grandfather August Palmer (born 1876) took him into his household. Even after Helmut Palmer's mother married a master butcher in neighboring Schnait in 1933 and started a family, he continued to grow up with his grandparents. His grandfather August Palmer and his son Reinhold, the youngest son of August Palmer's four children, thus became the most important caregivers of Helmut Palmer, who was exposed to a lot of hostility in his childhood and youth during the time of National Socialism , especially in Geradstetten that local Nazi fanatics wanted to transform into a National Socialist model community. At the entrance to the town in 1935 there were signs saying “Jews are not wanted here”. Also in Geradstetten, the NSDAP won 69.10% of the valid votes in the Reichstag election on March 5, 1933 .

After primary school , he began an apprenticeship as a fruit grower, which also took him to Switzerland from 1948 to 1950. There he got to know the Öschberg section, which he propagated as superior to the pyramid section customary in Württemberg. However, he sometimes treated orchards that did not belong to him. At the end of the 1950s, one of his orchards near Köngen was expropriated for motorway construction. He only received adequate compensation after a corresponding lawsuit. In 1969, Palmer married the trained secretary Erika, née Kröner, from Göppingen , who had been his girlfriend for several years. From the marriage in 1972 the future politician Boris Palmer and 1974 another son emerged. From relationships prior to this marriage, Palmer had three other children with two other women, a son and two daughters, including the author, journalist and filmmaker Gudrun Mangold .

He felt that he was being systematically persecuted by the various legal disputes. On the one hand, he insulted officials several times and was also violent. On the other hand, his accusation that the judiciary was riddled with former National Socialists was entirely true until the 1970s. He campaigned for environmental protection, criticized customers who shop with plastic bags, and fought the planned Neckar-Alb motorway, which was to be led through the Remstal.

Helmut Palmer's son Boris Palmer was elected to the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg in 2001 as a green candidate for the constituency of Tübingen and ran unsuccessfully for the mayoral election in Stuttgart in 2004 , but was then elected mayor of the city of Tübingen on October 22, 2006.

The Stuttgart CDU politician and former Minister of State Christoph Palmer is Helmut Palmer's nephew.

Life

Just because of his non-conformism and his very direct manner, Palmer always offended. He soon disliked regulations that were perceived as unnecessary and in particular any form of arbitrariness by the authorities to which he was exposed at a young age. This led to an activity on the local and local political level in Geradstetten , where he provided his house with slogans. Palmer fought - sometimes with violent accusations - against paternalism by the state , arbitrariness with the authorities and anti-Semitism .

The lone fighter soon expanded his political activities to include his superior offices, including the state capital Stuttgart , where Palmer once ran for the mayor election. Between 1957 and 2001 he ran as an independent candidate in 289 mayoral elections and 13 federal and state elections in Baden-Württemberg . In 1974 in Schwäbisch Hall Palmer received 40.74% of the vote in the first ballot and 41.43% in the second ballot. As an independent individual applicant , he achieved remarkably high results of up to 19.8% in federal elections, but was never able to win a constituency:

year Constituency password be right proportion of
1972 177 Waiblingen civil rights activist 07.104 04.9%
1983 167 Goeppingen civil rights activist 28,456 19.8%
1987 168 Waiblingen "Citizenship" voter group 31,625 19.2%
1990 193 Reutlingen Partner Palmer 16,148 11.3%
1994 168 Waiblingen Palmer instead of parties 13,020 07.8%
1998 172 Schwäbisch Hall - Hohenlohe Palmer instead of parties 07,898 04.7%

In the state elections in Baden-Württemberg in 1976 , Palmer and his wife ran for the European Federalist Party .

Palmer's first book publication in 1977 was entitled My Struggle and Resistance in Filbingerland . The first two words were printed in large letters on the book cover, giving the impression that the title was Mein Kampf like the work of the same name by Adolf Hitler . The second edition in 1979 retained this design, but had the subtitle Späth -lese , which on the one hand alluded to a wine rating and on the other hand to the then Prime Minister Lothar Späth .

Palmer had in numerous lawsuits answer. Repeatedly he served prison terms.

Helmut Palmer had been a member of the SPD since 2002 . According to his own statement, however, he only joined the party because he hoped that membership would give him more protection from the judiciary and other institutions that, in his opinion, persecuted him.

On December 24, 2004, Helmut Palmer died of cancer .

aftermath

One year after his death, the Association for the Care of Memory of Helmut Palmer e. V. founded. In addition to his widow Erika and his son Boris Palmer, Hermann Scheer and Rezzo Schlauch were founding members .

In 2015 the Landestheater Tübingen performed the play Political Palmer - Banished to Love for Swabia . The authors were Gernot Grünwald and Kerstin Grübmeyer .

Since March 2016, the museum exhibition at Hohenasperg Fortress has been commemorating his imprisonment in the penal hospital there .

Fonts

  • My struggle and resistance in Filbingerland . Marva, Geneva 1978, ISBN 3-85800-005-1 .
  • My struggle and resistance. Late harvest . Edition Marva, Geneva 1979, ISBN 3-85800-007-8 .
  • Damned to love for Swabia: Fruit growing and politics out of passion . Esslingen Book Service, Esslingen 1982, DNB  964887436 .
  • The guide for orchards and Nat-UR fruit growing. The total turnaround from crippled, artificial fertilizer, poison and chaotic fruit growing to natural fruit growing. Hauser, Metzingen 1988, DNB 900987944 .
  • The natural language of the fruit trees . Hauser, Metzingen 1991, OCLC 311780132 .
  • The key to nature 2000 - 50 years of private fruit growing advice . Carl Bacher, Schorndorf, 2000, ISBN 3-924431-21-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paragraph on Palmer's family and growing up according to Jan Knauer: Citizens' engagement and protest policy. The political work of the "Remstal rebel" Helmut Palmer and the reactions of his fellow men. Dissertation. Tübingen 2012; online at TOBIAS-lib, pp. 25-26.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Michael Kitzing: Helmut Palmer (1930-2004). In: Moments. Contributions to regional studies of Baden-Württemberg, issue 1/2020, p. 17
  3. ^ Marriage and children according to Jan Knauer: Citizen engagement and protest politics. The political work of the "Remstal rebel" Helmut Palmer and the reactions of his fellow men. Dissertation. Tübingen 2012, online at TOBIAS-lib, pp. 33, 61, 212, 347.
  4. ^ Jan Knauer: Citizen engagement and protest policy. The political work of the "Remstal rebel" Helmut Palmer and the reactions of his fellow men. Dissertation. Tübingen 2012; online at TOBIAS-lib, p. 38.
  5. ^ Jan Knauer: Citizen engagement and protest policy. The political work of the "Remstal rebel" Helmut Palmer and the reactions of his fellow men. Dissertation. Tübingen 2012; online at TOBIAS-lib, p. 342.
  6. ^ My more or less esteemed fellow candidates in FAZ of February 16, 2015, page 13
  7. ↑ Tim Höhn: The Remstal Rebel comes to the museum stuttgarter-zeitung.de, March 24, 2016. Accessed March 24, 2016.

literature

  • Jan Knauer: Helmut Palmer: The Remstal rebel. Konrad Theiss, Darmstadt 2014, ISBN 978-3-8062-2899-1 .
  • Jan Knauer: Citizen engagement and protest politics. The political work of the "Remstal rebel" Helmut Palmer and the reactions of his fellow men. Dissertation. Tübingen 2012; online on TOBIAS-lib.
  • Gudrun Mangold: Cutting fruit trees is amazingly easy with Helmut Palmer. Franckh-Kosmos, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-440-10465-6 .
  • Michael Ohnewald : Helmut Palmer. Life path of a rebel. Hohenheim, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-89850-114-0 .
  • Günter Wallraff : Resumption of persecution. In: Günter Wallraff: 13 unwanted reports. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2002, ISBN 3-462-03174-0 (first published in 1969), pp. 138–148.

Web links

Commons : Pictures of the Palmer House in Geradstetten  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Palmer, Helmut
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Remstal rebel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German civil rights activist and pomologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 8, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart - Untertürkheim
DATE OF DEATH December 24, 2004
Place of death Tübingen